Superfreaky

This post is seriously overdue. Some time ago, Steve tagged me to write something like, "things about me that you might find wierd" (let's just start with my resistance to that word, which I never really know how to spell anymore, though once upon a time it was no issue at all, because it never looks right anymore. Blame the car accident, Blame old age, I don't know). He guessed correctly, that I am not usually up for that particular sort of bloggery, but since he's nice and the topic is interesting, I'll bite.

I think I was meant to limit it to six, but that seems unlikely.

Why or what about me is wierd? (Have you read my blog?)

1) I pick at my face. This has been discussed, I do believe, in a long treatment of Narcissism, which might actually be the only viable type for the personality disorder, as it is quite difficult to treat. Anyway, that's (and I have it on good authority) not my problem, but torturing my face in front of the mirror when I'm stressed or repressing something (like, anger maybe?), is. Also, if there are angry people around me, I break out in excema. Not usually a problem these days, but it was chronic and fairly severe until I left home at age eighteen. Last major bout came when I was being positively tortured by my French boss on the blockbuster movie I worked on in 2000. Recently, I got a small patch over my right eye when I went home for Christmas. Imagine that.

2) I like to make fun of French people. Truthfully, I've had very dear Gallic friends, and even a boyfriend or two. But the cultural group as a whole? Sitting ducks. This isn't so much wierd as it is increasingly unoriginal and mundane on my part. Everyone mocks the French, even the Simpsons. But by "French people," what I really mean to say is Parisians, and I'll poke at pretty much anyone who thinks that he or they are the cultural epicenter of the universe, and I can tell you that after working there for four months, they absolutely do. This may come as a bit of projection and touch of hypocrisy from an American, but when was the last time you saw an ad in a subway station here that said we were the most signicant source of high culture? And I'll cop to great literature, music, theater, and painting positively pouring out of France until the mid-20th C, but what have you done for me, lately? Have you heard any French Pop you could tolerate past the third bar? Furthermore, they think people who smile a lot are stupid, which is why they often find Americans a bit dim. Sometimes I love their cinema, yet why does every other film have to be about how tormenting, great and acceptable cheating on your lover is? Furthermore, what's with all the angst? You have one of the highest standards of living in the world - try smiling once in a while, and chuck all that black out of your oh-so-chic chifforobes! Oh, sorry, I meant armoire. Huckleberry nailed another detestable trait when he rebutted an old military proverb: "Hope is not a course of action... Unless you're French." I will not mention WWII. I'm biting my tongue. But Christ, look at the Danish, they had more sack in one wooden clog... and they were, well, Danish.

I also mock the Flemish, but that's another story.

3)

a) You stress me out when you don't recycle. I mean it.

b) I don't like throwing anything away.

c) I think that pissing, crapping and throwing dioxin laden paper products into fresh, clean running water is proof positive that we are absolute barbarians. Shall we touch on the "contributions" of industry? What other animal routinely sullies a life giving resource? And not only are we running out of it, people, but there are corporate interest buying up the rights to it. To water. But then, they are patenting DNA, body parts, and seeds, so I guess I should just relax.

4) "Little People" unnerve me. There was a two month period a couple of years ago when I couldn't turn a corner, enter a bank or look at a motion picture without encountering a dwarf or midget. The strangest moment came while watching a white female dwarf brawling with her massive muscle-bound Afrincan-American boyfriend as they walked out of The Old Spaghetti Factory and on down Sunset Blvd. I sincerely apologize for any provocation I've given by mention of their race. I couldn't care less about it, but the scene was very odd, like a more up to date Fellini or Breughel or Bosch or Mike. They got quite physical with each other. While she was doing most of the striking, he kept trying to pull her in close, either to pacify or control. I remember back in '99 there was a Little Person's convention in Portland. I asked the environment lawyer I was sleeping with what he thought it would be like to be the activities director for such an event. I can't recall what he said, but I offered that were I in charge there would surely be short stories, haiku and "Limbo, Little People!"

I am so going to hell for this. How low can you go?

5) I am an ardent student of metaphysics, and believe quite a lot in many things a psychiatrist would term, "magical thinking." This, apparently, is common amongst people who grew up in stressful or uncontrolled circumstances. I'm sure that's true, but I have experienced all kinds of "strange" and "coincidental" things in my life. I also have a deep interest and love for science, and think that our knowledge of the "physical" world simply has to catch up with all the really odd and currently inexplicable things that really are real. So yes, I can tell you an embarassing amount about astrology: 80% of the time I can guess your sun sign, and when I'm wrong, my guess is usually somewhere prominent in your chart. I do not think there are only twelve personalities in the world, and if you'd ever cracked a book, you'd know that no one is suggesting that. Some people like to give the argument that astrology becomes self-fulfilling prophecy via the power of suggestion. When was anything ever that easy? Tell me that I'm going to keep my room clean, and watch me not do it. If it were true, there would be no midnight oreo stuffers, compulsive gamblers or nail-biters. I read and listen to works by Pema Chodron, Eckhart Tolle, Ram Dass, Deepak Chopra, Joseph Campbell, C.G. Jung, Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, Robert Bly, Robert Johnson, Marion Woodman, Barbara G. Walker, et. al., because they make me feel good about being alive, something I haven't always felt. I have significant dreams that come true, I am now starting to routinely "ask" the world to send things my way, and my wishes are granted, sometimes within the hour, sometimes in a month. I pray, I meditate, I talk to my inner child. My ex-fiance and I used to have the same dreams on the same nights when we were not sleeping in the same bed. We had complete conversations with each other, which we could recount the next day, and with startling sameness. I have never seen a ghost (well I thought I did once when I was twelve, but not at all convinced), been abducted by aliens, nor have I any inkling of past lives, but I concur with this admonition to old Horatio, "There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." I believe that we are, as human beings, trying to evolve into a state of love and away from a state of fear. I believe war doesn't solve anything, but I don't think protesting helps, because that is layering on more war consciousness. I believe in asking and living in peace instead. I believe in ripple effects. I believe in "loving allowance for all beings in their own time," mindful speech, killing the Buddha you meet on the road, that whatever happens, we have all agreed upon it maybe unconsciously in advance, and that in any case, it must be met with integrity, an open heart and forgiveness. I believe you and I are not only children of God, we are God, and we'd really better start acting like it, so I'll try to once and for all stop picking at my face. Still, having said all this, I am completely open to the idea that it's all load of hogwash. But you'll have to empirically prove it, and you can't. I love you anyway.

6) I have an almost perverse lack of aversion to dirt and germs. I will let the dog lick my face, and I pick things I've dropped up off the floor, possibly even the sidewalk, and eat them anyway. Maybe I rinse them first. I am quite healthy most of the time and expect to be that way until I die.

7) I am a closet exhibitionist.

8) I love to sing and can have quite a nice voice, but public singing has always terrified me to the point that I used always to fake singing poorly. Then the phobia became an actual inability to sing in front of people. My voice often closes off so that I can't sing. I have absolutely no idea why or where this aversion began, except that in elementary school other kids were teased and cut down for thinking they were good singers, even when they were. This is probably linked to a more general fear of "showing off." (see oddity #7) It always annoyed me when my mother would sing, and she had quite a trained voice, but to me it always sounded too rarefied, too affected. My friend Joe and I sometimes sing karaoke in his basement, and it really is one of the very best things I do for myself. Even the very vibrations in your chest feel therapeutic. That, and Joe is very encouraging. Thank you, you're a good friend.

I just wrote a list of songs that I can sing, and think I sing well. Except that it made me feel ill, just writing it, so I deleted it. You see? Wierd.

9) Except that it's WEIRD.

10) Having to wind up extension cords or garden hoses used to make me want to slit someone's throat. Now I find it vaguely irritating enough that occaisionally I get the impulse to thrash about, but I never day. Instead, I usually trip over it as I walk away from the mess.

11) I love really schmaltzy music from the 70s. I'm not kidding about this. Like, Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds. Like, Poco, Player, and Firefall. I know, Mike. I know.

12) White Chocolate gets me bothered. It's not chocolate, so stop calling it that.

13) Besides talking, laughing, crying and removing pictures off the wall in my sleep, I have also been known to rub my belly and smile. I've caught me doing it. Sometimes I even tell myself jokes as I doze.